Watching the Birds

 

The morning is cold, windy, and rainy. Even so, flowering things are everywhere, and the lawns are turning various shades of green that match the shrubs and trees in my neighborhood. The bird feeder is empty- swaying forlornly in the wind- and I chide myself for not filling it after walking June, before the rain came. As I gaze out of my kitchen window, I also see that the bird bath could use a good scrub. Unbidden, an image of Mom scrubbing the bird bath in the backyard of my childhood home comes to me. I see her, using an old dish scrubber to loosen the grime and algae that has collected, then splashing the old water out with her bare hands before bringing the garden hose to fill it with clean. She loved to watch the birds that would come to the feeder, as well as the squirrels who were treated to their own stock of corn and sunflower seeds, but she had no patience for any of the blackbirds and grackles that would also come to the yard. “Shoo! Get out of here!” Mom would bang on the window or open the back door and clap her hands loudly. “Durn crows,” she’d mutter, returning to her spot at the kitchen table. Minutes later, they would return, and she would sigh in frustration. As a joke, I gave her crow-themed items as gifts, which she hung on the walls with a laugh. It was only the living birds – which she viewed as bullies to the smaller ones- that she had no tolerance for.

At my home in Illinois, I also had a bird bath and a couple of feeders in the back yard, which I could see from my kitchen window. Placed far from any tree or trellis, the feeder stood like a sentinel, inaccessible to the squirrels, and causing headaches for anyone having to mow around it. I wasn’t without a heart, though, and put our own corn out for the squirrels, augmented with occasional peanuts and sunflower seeds. But the suet cakes and seed in the feeder were solely for the birds. I bought a bird book in order to identify the visitors I didn’t know and kept a pair of binoculars in a nearby drawer in case I needed a closer look. I, too, would scrub out the bird bath when it got gunky, sloshing the water out with my bare hands, and then filling it with fresh, cold water from the hose. One year Mom sent me a bird bath heater, with a lifetime warranty. “Keep the receipt and the box,” she told me. “If it should ever stop working, they will replace it.” And the company kept its promise: I’m currently on my fourth heater, paying only for shipping when I send the dead one back to be replaced.

 

When Mom moved to her apartment, and then eventually to the nursing home, I set up feeders in spots where she could watch the comings and goings of the birds. When I visited, she would complain that the feeders were empty, and that “someone” hadn’t been keeping them stocked. I told her the birds needed to be less greedy, and that I couldn’t come every day, but would fill them when I could. We would sit by the window and watch them; I would point out a finch, or a blue jay, and she would comment, “Oh, how pretty.” With her failing eyesight, I was never sure how much she could see, but the fact that they were there seemed enough. Eventually, that changed. As her dementia progressed, and her personality began to change, she became indifferent, and then angry with the activity of the birds at the feeder. One day, when I was sitting next to her in her room, watching the birds wheeling to and fro outside, she declared, “I don’t know who put that feeder out there, but I wish they would take it away!” Confused, I said I thought she enjoyed watching the birds. “No!” she said angrily. “I don’t like them! I don’t want them out there!” After I left, I pulled the car around to her window and wrestled the iron poles out of the ground. Remnants of seed - along with my own tears - spilling as I walked, I shoved them into the back of my car and understood this was just one more step toward the inevitable end of her life.

 

There are no birds today. Even with the feeder filled, they are not in the mood to venture out into the wet and cold. No squirrels today, either. With nowhere to put a feeder but next to a convenient tree, my battles are with squirrels, not bullying birds. I, too, pound on the window, having no effect other than making my hand hurt and causing June to run to the door, barking and growling. Someday I’ll leave this house and move to another place; when and where, I have no idea, but I think about it often. My wish list includes a porch; a spare room suitable for writing or overnight guests; a window over the kitchen sink; and a yard where I can put a clothesline, have a garden, and a dog can run. Oh, and a place for my kitchen table, next to a window, where I can watch the birds.